"A word of advice: next time you post, try not to inadvertently reveal why you've had no success with real women." Darth Wong to Bubble Boy
"I see you do not understand objectivity," said Tom Carder, a fundie fucknut to Darth Wong

...God fuck. This world would be miraculously lucky to see another like him once more. Rest in peace, sir.

"I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratchin', while my thoughts were busy hatchin', if I only had a brain!
I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain!"

I’m not really one to get upset over the deaths of people I don’t know, but god fucking dammit. He was a childhood hero of mine due to his mind and resilience, and helped spark my interest in science to begin with. RIP to an immense and unique intellect and an extraordinary man.

Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?

- Raw Shark

Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.

A truly remarkable man. I was lucky enough to meet him at an event at the Science Museum in London a few years ago, he seemed...unbreakable I think is the word.

I think his greatest legacy, as far as I'm concerned, is proving that the disabled can still do amazing things. Rest in Peace Sir.

Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.

"Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone amongst God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of Death.."

—29th Scroll, 6th Verse of Ape Law

"Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter. The uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”

The world has lost one of its brightest minds, and a man truly remarkable both for his scientific brilliance, and his perseverance in the face of adversity. May he rest in peace, and may his work never be forgotten until the stars themselves go out.

God, yesterday was quite possibly the most hellish news day since November of 2016. And we've had some doozies.

"Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?"

"Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow though."

-Generals William T. Sherman and Ulysses S Grant, the Battle of Shiloh.

"You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?"-Terry Pratchett's DEATH.

Librium Arcana, Where Gamers Play!
Nitram, slightly high on cough syrup: Do you know you're beautiful?
Me: Nope, that's why I have you around to tell me.
Nitram: You -are- beautiful. Anyone tries to tell you otherwise kill them."A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP" -- Leonard Nimoy, last Tweet

The problem with Hawking vs a Noble prize is two sides of one coin. One, everyone was waiting to see if he did anything even greater then what he had already before giving him one. The other is that while a brilliant man, precisely because of how advanced the subjects were he worked on many of his theories are still rather unproven and impossible to quantify, which again, favors waiting, least he win a Nobel prize for something proven wrong later, he was never always right after all Nobody is. Sadly he was at the time of his death years into working on a new paper with another physicist I forget the name of to explain his information theory for black holes, and it may well be that this paper will now never be published. That was totally going to be the work he'd get the Nobel prize for if it had panned out. Part of the reason he was working closely with another person though was because his health hasn't been great for years. He was deliberately trying to pass on as much as he could while he had time.

Amazing man, a shame he's gone now, but we are talking about a guy who was supposed to die decades ago and just decided against that plan. He doesn't need a Nobel prize to be inspiring.

"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956

I thought it was against the rules to receive a Nobel Prize posthumously. Who has received one?

While not strictly true, it is effectively true. No one who is deceased can be named the winner, as it's against the rules of the prize. It used to be that if you were nominated before your demise, you could still be considered and (eventually) awarded the prize, but the rules were changed in 1974 to permit deceased persons to receive the award only if they expired after the announcement but before the actual ceremony.

So no Nobel for Professor Hawking, for this and all the reasons Sea Skimmer laid out.

A random piece of trivia,but worth noting among his accolades. He's the only person to play himself on Star Trek (TNG's Descent, Part 1).

Baltar: "I don't want to miss a moment of the last Battlestar's destruction!"
Centurion: "Sir, I really think you should look at the other Battlestar."
Baltar: "What are you babbling about other...it's impossible!"
Centurion: "No. It is a Battlestar."

Corrax Entry 7:17: So you walk eternally through the shadow realms, standing against evil where all others falter. May your thirst for retribution never quench, may the blood on your sword never dry, and may we never need you again.

My favorite anecdote about him was from the filming of that episode. Naturally they gave him a tour of the set, and when they showed him the engineering area, he looked at the warp core and said "I'm working on that"

I'd hoped he'd live to see such a breakthrough, or a confirmation of hawking radiation. Though from what works of his I have read and the writings of those who knew him, he seemed perfectly content with the theoretical nature of his work and confident it would be proven with evidence as it was with math.

He lived so long for someone of his condition, yet as with so many, it always feels like the loss came too soon.

Death is only the beginner for others to take his place in the limelight of the laboratory.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."

Death is only the beginner for others to take his place in the limelight of the laboratory.

Yes, and hopefully they'll be as capable of humor as Hawking was in public.

But it is also reality that with each genius who passes it becomes a little bit harder for someone else to take the place, because the problems we are trying to solve only get harder, and while humans are getting smarter and more numerous it's slow on that. The reality is we have no basis to believe or disbelieve that humans are actually capable of comprehending the universe, it might go either way. It might be that we'll need true AI linked to a human brain in combinations to do it as well, and that neither acting alone will ever achieve it for example. And that's leaving beside the question on if it's even possible to fully model the universe from within it's own existence or not.

I for one plan to live a long time to see how this pans out.

"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956